Thanks much to Powers for sharing this pair of recent strips, with very similar jokes. (Further striking that they were adjacent on his local paper’s comics page!) … Oh, and pretty good jokes to boot.
Nag-cancelling
Tag / Blondie
But why Dagwood?
Thanks to Usual John, for suggesting this one, and also for alerting us that D.D. Degg’s column at The Daily Cartoonist had a look at this strip , and very courteously linked to us when he applied the phrase “Comic I Don’t Understand” to this ThatABaby.
All right — Why Dagwood? Do you think he is known for Frisbee mishaps?
April Fools Review
This “Barney & Clyde” strip was submitted by Usual John:
I think the gag is that the strip itself does not have (and does not need) a gag, but I’m sure there are other possible explanations.
I went hunting to see if there were any other worthwhile April Fools’ strips, but was sorely disappointed. Almost all of the “standard” setups simply showed one character playing a typically lame practical joke on someone else. The best strips were those few that elevated the humor with some sort of “meta” component. Here are a few examples:
(I especially liked this “Thatababy” strip because this year, my daughter decided to rearrange the silverware drawer as an April Fools’ joke. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, because we all just assumed that she had forgotten the usual arrangement.)
The last two examples are from the great Comic Strip Switcheroo (1-Apr-1997):
P.S. Feel free to embed your own favorite April Fools’ comics in the comments!
Labor-day-published gallery
These are just whatever was at least pretty good, was dated today, and was in some way about the Labor Day holiday or tradition. … A quick survey of which cartoons were willing to be about the holiday and which preferred to go on their own way.
This cool derby
Thanks to Usual John for pointing out this Blondie episode with a mystery. He asks “Is this a reference to someone in Blondie’s flapper past?”
We noticed later that Josh at The Comics Curmudgeon also features this cartoon. But he doesn’t truly answer the mystery, so this independent find doesn’t obviate the usual spirited CIDU discussion.
Obligatory topic
Okay, it’s Resolutions…
“This year we’ll turn it around” counts as a resolution in my book!
Maybe IDU that one?
Nancy: still looking for loopholes after all these years (and cartoonists!)
They don’t know it happens for real?
There’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000)
A different sort of self-recommend was Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (1970)
And you may think of others …
Right next door, innit?
From Stan, saying “I have one or two ideas about this, but they don’t really hold much water. Wouldn’t mind a solid explanation if one exists. Also, why didn’t Dagwood just drive Herb all the way home? It couldn’t have been too far out of his way.”
Elmo and the hamster
From Stan, who says “I don’t know what’s going on here. Is he hiding the hamster in his armpit?”
Makes no diff?
But anyhow, this little story has the structure of a Turnabout or maybe Topper trope. (Thorne Smith allusions entirely accidental!) Blondie looks shocked in the last panel, as though the mom’s substitution of the iPad as the plaything is even more of a shocking violation than the phone was. But is that so? Or is the mom’s “reasoning” sort of correct, and there is a greater likelihood of the child being able to make some use of a tablet than of a smartphone?
Comics I Don't Understand 